"Jules Watson has conjured up the mythic past, a
land of Celtic legend and stark grandeur. Readers
will find her world and characters fascinating and
unforgettable." -Sharon Penman, bestselling author of Devil's Brood

FACT VERSUS FICTION

My
books are based on what archaeology and history tell us about the time
and place in which they are set. However, while I have stuck to the
facts if they are known and accepted, there is much that we don’t know,
or which is the subject of debate among scholars. In these cases, I
have proposed things based on Celtic evidence elsewhere, or common
sense. At other times the story itself takes precedence.

The
Dalriada trilogy is based on known history of the late Iron Age and
Roman period in Britain. The Irish series is based on myths. However, I
have grounded them in the Iron Age archaeology of Ireland and
other Iron Age sites in Britain and central Europe

The Swan Maiden is based upon the old Irish tale of Deirdre and Naisi. However, Queen Maeve, or Medb, does not have a single, coherent ancient story to her name, so The Raven Queen is a "re-imagining" of her life using scraps of various myths - primarily the famous tale of The Táin, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley. I highly recommend reading the original myths. For both SM and RQ I
used Thomas Kinsella’s book The Táin (Oxford University Press, 1969). For the latter part of The Swan Maiden I used Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne (reprinted, Gerrards Cross, 1970).

The version of Deirdre and Naisi that Kinsella used from the ancient Book of Leinster can be seen at: http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/usnech.html. If the page has changed, go to Mary Jones’s site at http://www.maryjones.us/ and look under Celtic Lit; Irish texts; the Book of Leinster; and the section “The Exile of the Sons of Usnech”.

At Mary’s site you can also find the full text of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, upon which I based the major part of The Raven Queen's plot. Other versions are all over the web.

The Ulster Cycle

Cuchulainn Rides His Chariot Into Battleby J. C. Leyendecker

The story of Deirdre and Naisi, and Queen Maeve, is part of the group of old Irish
tales called “The Ulster Cycle”, the most famous of which is the Táin Bó Cúailnge, translated in English as The Cattle Raid of Cooley.

The
Ulster Cycle revolves around the exploits of King Conchobor (anglicized
as Conor) and his Red Branch warriors, including the famous Irish hero
Cúchulainn. The Táin describes a war between Queen Maeve of Connacht
and Conchobor over a famous bull.

Central to the
story of The Táin is the defection of a large number of Red Branch
warriors, led by Fergus mac Roy, from the Ulster side to the Connacht
side. The tale of Deirdre, as set out in The Swan Maiden, appears to be a foretale that explains this defection. The consequences of this event go on to drive the plot of The Raven Queen.

History of the Tales

The
historical background to these stories is confusing. The early peoples
of Ireland were not literate, and before Christianity the tales were
passed on orally by bards. Nothing would have been written down until
after the coming of Christianity in the fifth century, but the earliest
surviving manuscripts were made in medieval monasteries much later even
than that.

Thomas Kinsella takes his Deirdre
translation from the twelfth-century text the Book of Leinster,
although the language of the prose sections dates them to the eighth or
ninth century, and the verse sections seem to be a century or two
older. Further than this, we are stretching back into the mists of time
and bard tales.

I have mainly followed Kinsella’s
sparse sixth-to-ninth century version of the Deirdre story. However,
from the time that Conor’s envoys are sent to retrieve the fugitives, I
switched to a later fifteenth-century version of the tale. This was
found in the Glen Massan manuscript, discovered in Scotland - for
Scotland also lays claim to the Deirdre story.

This later version was used by Lady Gregory in her retelling of the Táin Cuchulain of Muirthemne (reprinted, Gerrards Cross, 1970), which embroiders the story with much more detail.

A Window on the Iron Age?

A typical Celtic roundouse at Flag Fen Archaeology Park

There was an early belief that the Ulster Cycle described the
Irish Iron Age in the centuries before Christ, known by many as the
time of the ancient Celts. Modern scholars don’t like this idea, and
instead of the tales giving us a “window” on Irish prehistory, think
they merely reflect the later medieval period in which they were written down.

Since
they were transcribed by Christian monks, no one
really knows how faithfully these Celtic pagan stories were
captured, and whether the bias of the writers and the society in
which they lived — twelfth-century Ireland — meant that events have
been
changed, or even left out. Is this why the beautiful maiden Deirdre and the fiery Queen Maeve are both scorned in the original myths as being manipulative, selfish, outspoken women, possessing frightening sexual powers over men? We will never know.

Glimpses of History and Archaeology

The Vix krater, used to serve wine at feasts

For my purposes I have set my Irish books in the Iron Age, in the few
centuries before Christ.

There were no historical events to follow,
but I have tried to ground them in the archaeology of Ireland,
Britain and Gaul and the writings of the Romans and Greeks about Celtic weapons, dress, food and houses.

Many of the aspects of
these Irish tales — the feasting, cattle raiding, boastfulness and
courage of the warriors, single combat of champions, taking of enemy
heads, riding in chariots — also fit in with what these Roman and Greek writers observed about the Celts.

In
turn, archaeological finds from western Europe dated to this
time back up some of the elements of the tales. Great cauldrons
and drinking
vessels, evidence of the importation of wine, and pits of animal bones
suggest large-scale feasting was a part of Celtic life.

Finely-decorated horse harness fittings from the UK

There are often
sacred deposits involving cow bones, and art shows the importance of
cattle, just as shown in the tales. The plethora of decorated
horse-fittings — bridle bits and
rings for reins, even a mask for a pony, found in Torrs, Scotland
— show that the
nobles were indeed riding around on their horses, showing off their
wealth.

Jewellery
is of fine and highly-skilled workmanship, and the amount of
gold, other metals and enamel used suggest they were
enthusiastic displayers of wealth. This fits in with the showy,
boastful warrior culture described in the Irish myths.

Celtic art confirms the importance of the taking and displaying of enemy skulls, and the cult of the head.

The
four sacred festivals of Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnasa and Samhain appear in the
myths, as well as being mentioned in other contemporary writings. A bronze
“calendar” found in Coligny in France dating to this period mentions Beltaine and Lughnasa, as well as focusing on Samhain. This
is important, as it is rare evidence of religious beliefs.

Neck torcs excavated from Erstfeld, Switzerland

In The Raven Queen, I mention King Conor of the Ulaid with a pet
monkey. The skull of a Barbary Ape from North Africa was indeed found
at the Iron Age site of Emain Macha (today's Navan Fort); evidence of long-distance trade with the Classical
World.

Evidence from Irish bog bodies suggests that warriors stiffened their
hair with a paste made from pine resin and herbs imported from the Continent: I could not
resist that one!

In Ireland, Iron Age trackways have been found,
constructed of oak planks stretched across bogs, larger than would be needed
for foot traffic. They seem to be “roads” for carts and horses, but could they also be for nobles in their chariots?

The Irish myths speak of the heroes driving in
chariots. They have never been found in Ireland, but they are known from
Iron Age graves in England, France, and Switzerland.

There are other differences between the stories and what has been excavated in Ireland.

The Desborough Mirror from Northampton, UK decorated in the ornate La Tene style

Irish Iron Age swords are not very substantial, but those in the myths
are
described as large hacking swords — the sort in use when the tales
were transcribed in medieval times. The brooches and some of the
clothes described in the myths are
not found in Iron Age Irish sites, but date from a later
period.

However, bear in mind that only a tiny percentage of
Celtic artifacts have come down the years to us. For us to possess them
now, they first had to be buried or lost (not destroyed or melted
down); then survived acid soils, ploughing, the digging of trenches for
houses and drainage, and destruction by rain and rivers for two
thousand years. Then, they had to be found again.

We know so little, and most things that perish, such as wood, leather and cloth, will have disappeared.

Since
we know the Celts had wide trading networks, and since the surviving art and
jewellery is so ornate, hinting at skilled craftsmen and wealthy
nobles, in my novels I have always described the
life of my ruling elite as very luxurious.

If the Celts were so in love with decoration that
they spent all that time on bridle fittings for their horses, or on
crafting an exquisite handle for a simple jug, I am sure they also
enjoyed decorating their houses, bodies, hair and clothes
to the same degree. Unfortunately, all of these have rotted away. Mostly only the cold metal survives.

The Glen Massan manuscript has the fugitives in The Swan Maiden living
on Loch Etive in Argyll in Scotland, and I have followed this tradition. There
are still many sites around Loch and Glen Etive named after Deirdre and
the Sons of Usnech. One rendering of the name Loch Etive is “the
roaring loch”, probably because of the Falls of Lora at its mouth, a
spectacular tidal waterfall of white rapids that appears in the book, and is indeed a sight to
behold at full spate.

The Swan Maiden characters also visit Dunadd, the enigmatic Celtic fort in the Kilmartin valley, south of Oban in Argyll.

King
Conor's fort of Emain Macha in Ireland has been identified as the
present-day site of Navan Fort, near Armagh. There is a wonderful
museum there all about the Ulster Cycle of tales, and you can sit in a
real roundhouse and listen to them!

In The Raven Queen, Maeve’s
stronghold of Cruachan has been identified as Rathcroghan near Tulsk,
Roscommon. Dun Ailinne is still the name of the modern site, and the Hill of Uisneach is
supposedly sacred because it is in the center of Ireland.
The characters also visit the island of Inish Mor, in Galway, and the site of the great Iron Age fort of Dun Aengus. The final battle is fought beneath the slopes of Slieve Gullion, traditionally associated with the great Irish warrior Cuchulainn.

These
books are mostly set around the Kilmartin valley in Argyll, Scotland. There you
can visit the hillfort of Dunadd, and the line of “ancestor” mounds,
tombs and stone circles. Other places important in the stories are
referenced below.

Temple Wood stone circle, Kilmartin

Kilmartin also has a fantastic little museum, where you can touch the
pelts of animals that would have been hunted there, and see
artifacts and reconstructions. More information is available from the Kilmartin House Museum website at http://www.kilmartin.org/

THE WHITE MARE AND THE DAWN STAG

AD 79 - AD 83

The Roman campaigns

The
basic information about the Roman governor Agricola’s campaign in Scotland from 79 to 83
AD is taken from the biography that his famous historian son-in-law
Tacitus later wrote. However, his account is sketchy in places, and I
have made small changes to fit my story.

Although
I
had already worked out the basic plot of The White Mare before I read
Tacitus, he says that early in his campaigns, Agricola entertained
an
exiled Irish prince, and was thinking of invading Ireland. I used this
by having Agricola tempt my Irish hero Eremon to defect to the Roman
side. The
following relate to events in The Dawn Stag.

AD
81 - Tacitus says that this year Agricola ‘crossed (water) in the
leading ship’ and subdued unknown peoples, drawing up his troops facing
Ireland. Gordon S. Maxwell notes that scholars have long debated what
this section of Tacitus means. In The Romans in Scotland (1989)
he suggests the translation could be re-interpreted thus: the Roman
army did not cross water at this time but the “trackless wastes” and
moors of Galloway in south-west Scotland. I took this idea and on it
based Eremon’s first campaign among the Novantae. It should be noted
that many scholars think this actually means Agricola crossed the Clyde
and campaigned closer to Epidii lands.

AD 82 –
Tacitus says this year began with an uprising of the tribes north of
the Forth, who did attack several forts. While the detail of Lucius’s
campaign up the east coast is my own, Agricola did split his forces,
which encouraged a surprise night attack on the Ninth Legion by the
enemy. A. R. Birley’s translation of Tacitus’s text Agricola uses
the words: ‘They cut down the sentries and burst into the sleeping
camp, creating panic.’ Tacitus states that Agricola came to the
rescue just in time, but I made the Albans victorious instead. Tacitus
was eulogising his father-in-law, and it is quite possible that any
Roman defeats were played down or omitted. This year, Agricola’s wife
did bear him a son.

AD
83 - In the spring,
Agricola’s infant son died. Tacitus infers that his grief was buried in
a renewed determination for conquest. The Roman army met the tribes at
a place called ‘Mons Graupius’, where the tribes had drawn up a force
of 30,000 men. We don’t know exactly where Mons Graupius was, but the
prominent hill of Bennachie near Aberdeen is one good contender,
particularly as nearby is the large Roman matching camp at Logie Durno.
Tacitus reports the battle occurring at the "end of the
season" but I moved it to summer. The leader of the Scottish
forces was
called Calgacus, which means something like “the swordsman.” I followed
Tacitus for the rough format of the battle — and Agricola did use
cavalry reserves. I won’t spoil the ending!

Dalriada

Dunadd fort in Kilmartin, Scotland

Mythical and ancient sources say that warriors and kings from the
Dalriada kingdom in northern Ireland settled in the west of Scotland,
in Argyll, around 500 AD. This brought them into conflict with the
native inhabitants, known to the Romans as Picts. Though the tradition
is therefore strong that a Dalriadan kingdom was established in western
Scotland from Ireland, historians and archaeologists are divided over
whether this actually included a movement of people, or merely ideas
and the Gaelic language, and whether these spread from Ireland to Scotland or vice
versa.

Regardless, Dark Age Christian sources report that the
Gaelic Dalriadan kings, with their seat at the fort of Dunadd in
Argyll, warred with the Pictish kings in the east of Scotland for many
years. In 843 AD, the two peoples were joined by the accession of the
Dalriadan king Kenneth MacAlpin to the Pictish throne, a man who was
possibly descended from the Pictish royal line through his mother.
After this, the Picts seem to disappear as a separate people from
history, and Gaelic became the language of Scotland, and Gaelic
kings its rulers.

Most scholars do agree that,
because of their close coastlines, the northern Irish were probably in
contact with western Scotland centuries before the accepted
“colonization”.

So the first mixing could
easily have occurred in the first century, as occurs in my books with
the arrival of a few nobles and the intermarriages of the main
characters. A note of interest from The Dawn Stag: my characters Conaire and Caitlin have a son called Gabran. Gabran was a
documented king at Dunadd, though he lived later than Conaire’s son.

Dunadd

The carved footprint on top of Dunadd,supposedly used for the inaugurations of kings

Dunadd
was the royal seat of the Gaelic Dalriada kings from the fifth to tenth
centuries AD. However, excavations have proven that people were living
on, or at least visiting the site, for thousands of years before that,
including the time my books are set - the Roman invasions. A prominent volcanic
crag would have been a sought-after defensive site. Excavations have
focused on the later stone walls, yet it is entirely possible that
traces of earlier timber houses were destroyed by this later building.
To my knowledge, the plain around the crag’s feet has not been
excavated.

People

The
term ‘Pict’ was not used by Roman writers for the peoples of Scotland
until the fourth century, and may come from a Roman term meaning
‘painted people’ — possibly because they tattooed themselves. However,
although my Scottish characters obviously ‘became’ the Picts we don’t
know what they called themselves, and so I’ve fallen back on an old
name for Scotland — Alba — and called them Albans.

With
regard to the “Gaels”, there is evidence that this is what the early
peoples of Scotland called those in Ireland, and what the Picts called
the Gaelic-speaking people living in the west of Scotland after 500 AD.

Argyll, where the people of Dalriada had their later center of power, means “Coast of the Gael.”

Language

By
the sixth century AD there is evidence that the Picts (descendants of
the native Scottish people) and the Argyll Scots (possibly descendants or
relations of the Dalriadan Irish) spoke a mutually unintelligible form
of the Celtic languages. However, languages can change rapidly, and we
don’t know how close the two were earlier in history. I’ve left them
essentially speaking the same language, for simplicity.

The Sacred Isle

The stones of Callanish, Isle of Lewis

In my books, the Isle of Lewis in
the Hebrides is the "Sacred Isle". Here, on a lonely headland facing the Atlantic,
stands the greatest British stone circle after Stonehenge and Avebury:
Callanish. The broch tower where Rhiann once lived is mostly still
standing nearby; it is called Dun Carloway. Interestingly, the
historian Plutarch relates the story of a traveler, Demetrius of
Tarsus, who visited a “holy island” probably in the Hebrides, during
Agricola’s campaigns. I also found this out after I had written it!

The Female Royal Line

One
of the most intriguing aspects of the Picts is that there is some
tenuous suggestion that royal blood was passed through the female line,
rather than from father to son. For example, in the list of Pictish
kings which states their fathers' names, no son ever succeeds his
father to the throne. In a matrilineal system, men would succeed their
uncles, brothers, and grandfathers instead. If true, this puts the
early Scottish
peoples out of step with what we know of the early Irish and British.
This idea was one of the starting points of my story.

The Sisterhood

Following
on from the idea of the female royal line, I began to muse that such a
veneration of female blood and power could stem from an ancient form of
Mother Goddess worship, surviving in Scotland from the Neolithic age,
or even earlier. In my books, this female-centered religion of the
“Old Ones” involves an order of priestesses: the Sisters.

The
existence of druids is attested by Classical writers — however, I am
aware there is no evidence for a goddess-worshipping sisterhood. It is
purely fiction
(unfortunately!).

Herb Use

With
some simple research, anyone can discover the medicinal properties of
British native plants. Untrained use of such preparations can be, of
course, very dangerous, and I do not advocate that anyone try them.
Many plants have psychoactive properties, and some people believe the
druids used such plants in their rites. For safety reasons I didn’t
detail what my herbal preparation saor might have contained, for many plants could have produced this “out of body” effect.

Likewise,
the ancient peoples knew of both contraceptive herbs, and those which
could produce abortions; I haven’t named them. The Romans apparently
over-used one contraceptive plant to the extent it became extinct.

The Rye Fungus

The
ergot fungus grows on rye plants under certain conditions. It contains
psychoactive compounds that some scholars think may have caused the
effects attributed to witches during the Middle Ages —
uncontrollable twitching and fitting, hallucinations, and a burning
sensation in the extremities and tongue. There has been occasional
suggestions that it was ritually used by ancient peoples. It is extremely toxic, and ingestion is usually fatal. Its use in my books is purely fictional.

Tribes

The
names of the tribes on my maps are taken from a text by the Greek
geographer Ptolemy, writing in the second century AD. It shows
the placements of major tribes in Great Britain and Ireland. It
is possible that this information was captured during Agricola’s
campaigns, or even earlier.

Some people think the
tribal names relate to animals, and could indicate totemic affinities.
Thus the Epidii might be related to horses, and the Lugi to ravens
(which is why the Lugi king has a raven sail). A note on the Caledonii:
On Ptolemy’s map, this tribe is shown as the Caledones. However, by the
fourth century, when the last book in this trilogy is set, the name
seems to have become “Caledonii” to Roman writers, so for simplicity’s
sake I’ve used that.

Names

I
don’t follow one naming scheme, since we don’t know what language the
Albans spoke: was it closer to Welsh or Irish at this time? So some of
my names are Irish, some Pictish, and some invented. We have a list of
later Pictish kings: I’ve used names from this list for major male
characters including Maelchon, Gelert, and Nectan. We don’t have
records of female Pictish names, so these are mostly Irish or invented.

The
exception is Calgacus, which means something like “The Swordsman.”
Tacitus names him as having lead the resistance of the tribes against
Agricola’s armies at Mons Graupius.

Rhiann, though
based on Welsh, is not a traditional name. All of Eremon’s men have
Irish names, although Eremon is a mythical name — the first Gaelic king
of Ireland.

Gods and Goddesses

A goddess from the Gundestrup Cauldron

Since
we don’t know what the Albans called their gods, I’ve used a mixture of
Welsh gods (Annuvin) and goddesses (Rhiannon, Ceridwen), British
goddesses (Andraste and Sulis), and Irish gods (Lugh, Manannán). The
latter appear all over the Celtic world, from Ireland to Gaul. In fact,
the cities of Lyon and Carlisle are named after the sun god Lugh.
Manannán appears in Irish and Welsh myth, as a god of the sea. In
Wales, he was a husband of the goddess Rhiannon, and also gave his name
to the Isle of Man. Taranis is known from Gaulish inscriptions and
seems to be a god of thunder and war. Cernunnos, the stag god, was worshipped in Britain and on the Continent.

Standing Stones / Mounds

All
of the standing stone arrangements and tomb mounds in the United
Kingdom were built by Neolithic or Bronze Age peoples before 1500 BC,
not by Celtic Iron Age peoples in the first century AD. However, the
Celts probably venerated and possibly used older monuments for
their
own rites. Though there is evidence for this in other parts of
Scotland, there is no evidence for it in the Kilmartin valley, or at
Callanish on the Isle of Lewis.

Pictish Symbols

The
Picts left behind extraordinary carved stones dating from the sixth or
seventh century AD onwards, so I had the idea that the same symbols
were used to decorate wood, walls and bodies much earlier. The symbols
used for my chapter headings are Pictish symbols, as seen on the later
stones. The body tattoos I mention are based on Pictish carvings of bears, boars,
stags and eagles.

At Dunadd there is a famous later
Pictish carving of a boar, and as my Dalriadic line began with my
heroes Eremon and Conaire from the first two books, I gave them this
boar as their totem.

The main symbol I mention in the book is called the "crescent and V rod" (see left).

This
is the one I describe as being the crescent of the moon goddess,
representing the feminine; crossed by a spear or arrow, representing
the masculine. People have asked me if this is its real meaning — unfortunately, no
one has any idea what the Pictish symbols mean. This came to me as an
intuition, and fitted my book, so I used it.

Places in The White Mare

Castle Dounie

The fort of Dunadd in Argyll and the “Sacred Isle” (the Isle of
Lewis) exist as described, as do the tombs and stones in the “ancestor
valley” at Kilmartin. The Sisters' stone arrangement on the Sacred Isle is
Callanish.

My
Dun of the Cliffs is an Iron Age fort near Crinan now called Castle
Dounie; climb up there for a spectacular view of the Sound of Jura.

Calgacus’s Dun of the Waves is an invention, sited near present day Inverness.

The existing hillfort of Traprain Law, near Edinburgh, is the home of the character of Samana.

The
Leven river that flows from Loch Lomond probably means the Elm River,
as I name it. Lomond probably means “beacon” so the Loch of the Beacon
is Loch Lomond, and The Beacon is the mountain Ben Lomond.

The Clyde was known in Greek and Roman times as the Clutha.

Places in The Dawn Stag

Achnabreck carvings, Kilmartin

The spiral carvings that Rhiann visits are the carvings at Achnabreck, near Kilmartin.

The
stone circle she visits with Linnet is Temple Wood (see above), and the standing
stones among which she says her farewell to Linnet before the last
battle are the Nether Largie stones; all in Kilmartin valley.

The moor the priestesses cross is Rannoch Moor.

It
is Loch Tay on the other side, which is well known for the remains of
its crannogs — man-made island forts. There is a reconstructed crannog there,
which inspired the dun at which Rhiann tells her tale.

Nether Largie Stones, Kilmartin

Eremon
and Conaire’s rockfall is based on the delightfully-named pass Rest and
Be Thankful, up which I have driven many times. Thankfully, I have not walked
it as they did! One of the possible locations for the great battle between
the Romans and Celts now known as Mons Graupius is the hill of
Bennachie, near Aberdeen.

The sacred mountain of Argyll is Cruachan, and it lies
at the head of Loch Awe, which means something like “loch of the
waters”, as I name it.

This loch does lead to the Kilmartin valley, and Dunadd.

Interesting facts from The Dawn Stag

Since
stirrups were not invented until much later, ancient cavalry saddles
probably had leather horns to grip the rider’s leg, and enable him to
brace and swing a sword.

Wheat and barley were
stored in clay-lined pits, and the fermenting grains on the damp edges
used up all the oxygen and produced carbon dioxide, which together kept the grain fresh.

Reconstructed saddle by Peter Connolly

Duels of champions such as that forced on Maelchon were a noted
feature of Celtic warrior society, according to the Romans, and involved strict codes of honour.

In the Irish myths, bards were feared for their abilities to shame even kings into changing their behaviour.

Tacitus says the Celts at Mons Graupius did use chariots.

The
glimpse Rhiann has the night before battle, of Romans swimming across a
strait, refers to the sacking of the druid sanctuary of Anglesey off
the coast of Wales in AD 60.

The woman hiding with
her child from falling iron bolts recalls the Roman destruction of the
great hillfort of Maiden Castle in Dorset, soon after the Roman
invasion of Britain in AD 43. Skeletons were found here with Roman
ballista bolts embedded in their spines.

The snippet of song at the end is adapted from the Irish myth of Deirdre as she leaves Alba to return to Erin.

THE BOAR STONE (UK) / THE SONG OF THE NORTH (U.S)AD 366 – AD 367

In
the first two books in the trilogy, the first Irishmen (Gaels) come
from Dalriada in Ulster and intermarry into an early Scottish tribe
(Picts). By the time of the third book, The Boar Stone / Song of the
North, the Gaels
of Irish descent, living at Dunadd, have become the enemies of the
Pictish tribes that inhabit the rest of Scotland. To their south is
Hadrian's Wall, manned by Roman soldiers as a border between the
barbarian lands of Scotland and the Roman province of Britannia
(modern-day England, roughly speaking).

The Great “Barbarian Conspiracy” Of 367 AD

Housesteads Fort on Hadrian's Wall,the border between Roman England and the wilds of barbarian Scotland

The major Roman events portrayed in this novel were documented by a
late fourth-century Roman writer called Ammianus Marcellinus. He
records that in AD 367 Britain was subject to a concerted invasion by a
host of barbarian peoples on the northern frontier: the Picts attacked
the north; the Scots and the Attacotti, possibly from the Western
Isles, attacked the west; and the Saxons from northern Germany the east
coast.

Though there had been previous raids by the Picts and
Scots, most notably in 360 AD, nothing like this had been unleashed on
Britain before, and was distinguished by the uncharacteristic
co-operation of the barbarians involved.

There were
indeed scouts and spies — the areani — that roamed north of Hadrian's Wall
and were quartered in the outpost forts, and at this juncture they were
apparently lured by bribes to turn traitor to the Roman administration,
providing information to the enemy which aided their attacks.

Fullofaudes,
the Dux Britanniarum, was surprised, cut off and “overcome”;
Nectaridus, the Count of the Saxon Shore, was slaughtered in battle.
The barbarian hordes, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, penetrated
deep into the south-east of England and caused havoc, breaking into
small bands to plunder the rich villas and undefended towns.

At
the same time the order of the Roman army had completely disintegrated,
with the cohesion of units destroyed, and leaderless bands of soldiers
roaming at will.

Ammianus is not without his
sceptics, as he was writing at a later time and probably seeking to
glorify the man who came to put down the rebellion. But though there is
little archaeological proof, there are various pieces of circumstantial
textual evidence to suggest his report could be accurate.

So what happened after the end of the book?

According
to Ammianus Marcellinus, a commander called Count Theodosius was
despatched by the emperor Valentinian I from Germany with a field army
of crack troops to restore order. Over the next two years he defeated
the roaming bands of barbarians with their plunder, fortified towns and
regarrisoned many forts on Hadrian’s Wall.

But
despite this, the outpost forts north of the Wall were abandoned, the
areani spies and scouts disbanded, and all Roman control over the
borderlands was relinquished: the Romans had indeed left Alba.

The End of Rome In Britain

A milecastle on Hadrian's Wall

The fortunes of the Roman military in Britain went up and down in the
following forty years, as the Empire on the continent struggled to
retain its power in the face of increasing barbarian incursions from
all directions.

Again and again, British soldiers were withdrawn from
the frontier to shore up defences in Gaul, Germany or Italy, and in 383
AD an upstart senior British officer, Magnus Maximus, declared himself
western emperor, supported by the British forces and nobility.

When
he left to fight for his throne in the east he took a large army with
him, but after his defeat by the eastern emperor those troops never
came back.

By the early 400’s the emperors had their
hands full trying to defend themselves against the Goths in the east.
The province of Britannia was denuded of troops, and after 402 there is
little trace of coins, so it appears the money dried up, too, with no
pay for soldiers or officials.

Another would-be
British emperor, Constantine III, left Britain in 407 to defeat more
barbarian invaders and usurp the western throne. He probably took the
last remaining regular troops with him.

According to
other historians, Britain came under attack from the Saxons around 410,
and after appeals by the British nobility to the Emperor Honorius for
help, they were told to look to their own defences. The British towns
and tribes reverted to ruling themselves.

So the
withdrawal and disintegration of the organised army and the end to
centralised Roman government in Britain was a gradual change, rather
than a sudden recall. The evidence at Hadrian’s Wall is of a gradual
abandonment at some forts, and at others occupation continues, albeit
in a more basic form, with people scratching a living among the stone
buildings.

Disease and desertion would have taken
its toll on the remaining garrisons, and eventually the few soldiers
that stayed on must have settled down to farm, being absorbed into the
local population.

By 410 AD Britain had therefore
ceased to be part of the Roman Empire and was left to its own fate. A
century later, the first waves of Saxons, Angles and Jutes were to
change its face forever.

Interesting facts from The Boar Stone / The Song of the North

Tutors
to the Roman nobility were often slaves, so Minna’s acceptance as such
at Dunadd was not unusual. Furthermore, some slaves could attain a high
status, and many were freed by their masters, some of their descendants
rising to dizzy heights in society.

The north of
Britain does have native poppies — the “red flower” — and even
though the local species is not as potent as the more well-known
eastern opium poppy, it does contain natural opiates that could be
concentrated to effect sedation.

Some plant poisons
were used on blades in the ancient world, and though many come from the
Mediterranean they could easily be imported into Britain. A noted one
was wolf’s-bane, as it was used on the barbs of arrows to
kill wolves. Better known as aconite, it is extremely dangerous and
damages the heart muscle, causing a fast pulse and shallow breathing,
and swift death if ingested orally.